Minions, Monsters, and Madness Review

There’s something nostalgic about old Flash games. Game developers used the platform to hone their skills, learning how to make better games in record time. Minions, Monsters, and Madness perfectly encapsulates this feeling, right down to feeling like a stepping stone for greater things.While there isn’t anything inherently wrong in this by the numbers RPG, there isn’t anything to write home about either. Everything feels bland from the clunky battle system to the painfully average writing. The story is a bit convoluted, using the old cliche of “we’ll find out later” as an excuse to suddenly drop new terminology or cover up plot holes. Your party members aren’t much better, as a mix of monsters and humans with designs that are somehow both unique and boring. There’s no point getting attached to any of them, though, as newer monsters are almost always better than the ones you’ve raised. Enemy designs take this a step further with plenty of standard RPG tropes.

This is a prime example of too many ideas and none of them executed well. The game is designed with a little bit of everything from classic RPG influences but nothing truly sticks. Events are determined by 20 sided dice rolls which are a cute nostalgia throwback at first but quickly becomes pointless as dice-altering stats and re-rolls make the outcome easy to influence. Damage can be negated with timed clicks like in the Mario RPGs, but lack the visual cues to let the player know if it was successful or not. The battle system itself manages to take something like turn-based combat and make it feel slower, with clunky controls making them take much longer than they need to.

“This is a prime example of too many ideas and none of them executed well.”

The quality of this game is what you’d typically expect from an old Flash game on Newgrounds; a bare bones, sophomore attempt that doesn’t do anything terrible, but doesn’t strive for greatness either. Everything is so by-the-numbers that nothing stands out, with plenty of other choices out there that do what Minions, Monsters, and Madness tries to accomplish with far more eloquence. In a genre that asks for hours of commitment, it’s difficult to sell the idea of drudging through something average, even at a lower price point.

Score: 45/100

[A copy of the game was provided by the developer or publisher for the purpose of this review.]

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